Yogic (k)not

Don’t worry, you are not the only one confused. This statutory yoga issue has got us all brilliantly baffled. Is the government forcing every school to make yoga compulsory for students? Or is it about forcing schools gather their students — currently on summer vacation — for a celebratory yoga class on June 21, International Yoga Day? Or is it not really compulsory? In any case, if yoga is so good for health shouldn’t every Indian benefit from it? Or is yoga really a chariot of Hindutva threatening to crush religious minorities under its powerful chakras?

Dear reader, stop for a minute. These are not the right questions to ask. How good yoga is for health is not relevant. Whether Muslims should do yoga or not is not relevant. In fact, whether yoga is a Hindu practice or not is irrelevant as well. What is relevant is the attempt to impose a practice — in this case compulsory yoga — on secular institutions like schools when some Indians are opposed to it. Such an imposition is wrong, whether or not Muslim organisations fight it. It is unnecessary and divisive, initiates children into sectarian disharmony and creates religious friction out of nothing.

So the question to ask is this: is it right for the government to try to make yoga compulsory in school? Well, you may ask, why not? Yoga is good for health and the government is only trying to do what is best for our children. Why should the religious overtones worry anybody? This is not about religion, it is about health and well being.

Sadly, health and well being is never the top priority of our government. It spends barely one per cent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, among the lowest in the world (the US, for example, spends more than eight per cent). This is particularly unfortunate since most of our citizens are very poor, who cannot afford proper healthcare.

Besides, we have reason to believe that health is not prioritised over religious considerations. Earlier this month, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, of the Bharatiya Janata Party, decided that eggs would not be served to schoolchildren. The vegetarian chief minister shot down a proposal to serve eggs — a cheap source of protein, vitamin and minerals — in mid-day meals and anganwadi meals to deeply malnourished children, most of whom are non-vegetarian, including many from tribal backgrounds. He prioritised religious practice over the health of children. Half the children of Madhya Pradesh are undernourished, and most children in the tribal areas are severely malnourished. Eggs — considered nature’s perfectly balanced food, rich in high-quality protein, vitamins, fats and minerals — are included in mid-day meals and anganwadi meals in many other states. Even one egg a week would have made a big difference to these acutely malnourished children.

But Madhya Pradesh is not alone in denying children their much needed nourishment through eggs. Several other states also stick to vegetarian mid-day meals and anganwadi programmes. Interestingly, almost all of these are BJP-ruled. These states sometimes offer milk or bananas instead — which are okay, but not as good for nourishment as eggs are.

So clearly, the health of schoolchildren is not being prioritised over religious considerations when it comes to religions our ruling party cares about. And there is a worrying tendency to impose majoritarian values, ruling out the question of choice. Take states where mid-day meals include eggs, for example. Vegetarian students there are not forced to eat egg, some schools offer them a banana instead. By erasing that option in states that prioritise religion over children’s health, and forcing vegetarian and often inadequate meals onto malnourished children whose families eat but cannot afford eggs, is wrong.

So it is not clear why the government is claiming to prioritise health over religious sentiment when it comes to yoga. Forcing yoga onto students who may have cultural or religious issues with the practice does not sit well with our secularism, where the state promises to be equidistant from all religions.

This compulsory yoga takes on a more menacing appearance in the backdrop of worrying steps like banning beef or forcing Vande Mataram — our national song that Muslims have cultural problems with — on citizens. If it was only not imposed — it would have been lovely.

After all, brute force is not the best way to popularise anything. In fact, the opposite works better. Reminds me of the story of the king (probably of Travancore) in Kerala who wanted to popularise tapioca, which was then unknown to the rice-eating Malayalees. Apparently, he planted it in his garden and spread the word that it must not be eaten by ordinary people since it was the food of royalty. Soon enough every Malayalee worth his meen curry had sourced it and was growing it too. Thus the “clandestine” tapioca spread like wildfire and was soon a staple in Kerala.

I have no idea whether the story is true. But knowing human nature, it could very well be. If our government had any sense it would not go overboard imposing yoga on everybody in order to popularise it. Of course now the swords are out and the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) has strongly opposed compulsory yoga in schools, saying bowing to the Sun like in Surya Namaskar is against Islam, which only allows you to bow to Allah. No offence, yoga as an exercise is fine, it said, but the imposition of cultural associations is not. This was too much for a BJP member of Parliament like Yogi Adityanath, who declared that those who do not wish to bow to the Sun need to drown themselves in either the sea or in deep darkness. “Whoever thinks Sun is communal,” he said, “I would like to humbly request them to drown themselves in the sea. Or they should stay in a dark cell.”

Thus, the plan to take advantage of the United Nations’ declaration of an International Yoga Day and promote yoga around the world disintegrated into a dirty squabble to claim yoga as a Hindu practice, and squeeze everyone into it. Apart from making an ostentatious bid for a Guinness record with 45,000 Indians — from school children to bureaucrats and perhaps the Prime Minister himself — poised to perform yoga asanas in a grand celebration of that special day. Let’s see how we get out of this fabulous yogic knot.

The writer is editor of The Little Magazine. She can be contacted at: sen@littlemag.com